Corrections Concepts, Inc., a Dallas based non-profit is working to get Wakita, Oklahoma to sponsor the building of a new private prison. The facility would be the first all Christian prison in the U.S. Volunteering inmates would be supervised by Christian guards, and staffers. In addition, the inmates would work at the facility in a prison industry under the federal PIECP program. However, Corrections Concepts intends to not abide by the PIECP mandatory requirements of paying inmate workers in the program prevailing wages - instead choosing to pay them federal minimum wages - for their labor. This is what got me interested in this story.
The avoidance of paying prevailing wages was first presented by Corrections Concepts founder, Bill Robinson to Texas Governor Bush in 1995 when Bush's support was sought. Bush so liked the idea of combining faith-based community initiatives with prison industries for prison inmates, in the following year (1996) he authored Resolutions there in Texas making it easier for such initiative programs to get state tax dollars for their operations. Once in the White House, Bush brought the concept with him, establishingWhite House Offices of Faith-Based Community Initiative satellite offices in every Federal Department and Agency including the Department of Justice that oversees the PIECP program. Bush did this by Executive Orders within days of taking office in 2001.
PIECP-Violations opposes the building of such a "Christian" prison in Wakita, Oklahoma - not on just religious grounds, but also due to the stated intention of not abiding by the federal PIECP requirements regarding the planned prison industries. Too many prison industries and their private sector partners are already taking advantage of this important program, by not paying prevailing wages to the inmate workers. This allows for more corporate and prison industry profits at the expense of the work force. In addition it provides these violators with an unfair advantage over private sector companies who manufacture the same or similar products on the open markets. I exchanged emails with Mr. Robinson and was unpleasantly surprised by his attitude, religious zeal and willingness to believe anyone who opposes him is "Godless" or "one sick puppy". These communications are available to read and for those of you who want to read them for yourself, I've made them available. Scroll down the page here. While many in the media articles about his Christian Prison efforts were objecting to the concept, Robinson chose me to single out and attack. Maybe it was because like him I was an ex-offender and he felt more comfortable going after me instead of the others who voiced the same objections as I. My main objection to his proposal was due to that part that stated he wanted to use inmates in his prison industries under PIECP and underpay them with minimum wages instead of the required prevailing wages. Robinson has denied he would pay wages less than required by PIECP in his rants to me, but the first paragraph of his "Curriculum" is clearly worded with "minimum hourly wage". Like PRIDE in Florida, Mr. Robinson refuses to see any real difference between prevailing and minimum wage rates.
The PIE Program allows prison industries to sell and distribute prisoner made goods upon the same markets as private sector manufacturers and to openly compete for private sector market shares for those products. The prison industries are already disadvantaging the private sector competitors by giving their "partners" leases of huge prison facilities for $1.00 a year. In addition corporations operating prison industries provide no health insurance, no workers unemployment premiums, no paid vacations or other perks to workers that the private sector competing companies must provide. This results in the loss of private sector jobs to those citizens in desperate need of keeping their jobs, by transferring those jobs behind prison fences and walls and giving them to inmates.
Currently - as stated on PIECP VIolations' site - there is a serious lack of actual, effective oversight of PIECP operations nationwide. The Bureau of Justice Assistance has outsourced this oversight to a private non-profit "Association" - the National Correctional Industries Association (NCIA). There can be no real oversight or compliance with the PIE Program's rules and laws while an Association made up of the prison administrators, managers and vendors involved in the program oversee themselves. The NCIA is made up of just that - vendors to, administrators, managers and employees of the participating PIECP industries operated in each state.
The residents and citizens of Wakita, Oklahoma should review the PIECP Guidelines and ask pointed and specific questions of Corrections Concepts, Inc. about the proposed Prison Industry they plan on opening at the prison complex. These residents should know what the program is about and whether or not the prison industry will result in the loss of private sector jobs or unfairly compete with local Oklahoma Private Sector manufacturers of similar products. This must be done to protect Oklahoma jobs from disappearing behind the prison fences.
Since making his proposal to George W. Bush in 1995, Robinson has made numerous attempts in the past to get Texas authorities to allow him to open his Christian Prison Facility in their state. Each of these efforts have failed. It seems Dubya was more interested in adopting CCI's concepts and pushing them as his own - not in supporting Robinson's program.
Obviously the 1st Amendment to our Constitution addresses separation of church and state - regardless of the denials of this by the likes of Christine O'Donnell, Sharon Angle and other conservative Tea Party candidates in the election cycle last month. Though in all honesty, the wide separation that has historically separate religion and government has been narrowing considerably since 2001 when the WHOFBCI offices were instituted by President Bush. Tracing this movement back to Dubya is relatively easy...by realizing this narrowing has been pursued by predominantly conservative Evangelical Christian groups and organizations along the lines of CCI.
One only has to look to the names associated with sponsoring CCI back in '95 - Dr. James T. Draper of Southern Baptist Lifeway Christian Ministries, Charles W. Colson of Prison Fellowship Ministries, Dick Armey and Dan Quayle to mention a few. All of these individuals added their personal "quotes" in support of Robinson's proposed Habilitation House prison proposal.
I believe it is no coincidence that these far right leaning individuals were involved in promoting CCI's proposal and concept of operation of a private Christian only prison and prison industry operation. Mr. Armey has been heavily involved in furthering the Tea Party agenda of late and has been involved with the American Legislative Exchange Council commonly referred to as ALEC. In addition Charles W. Colson has deep ties to ALEC, as his Prison Fellowship Ministries (PFM) has a "Justice Fellowship" arm and also is represented upon ALEC's Private Sector Executive Committee by PFM Vice President, Pat Nolan. As shown, a conservative agenda containing right wing ideals is at the core of ALEC and CCI's efforts of establishing his Christian Prison.
So far many of us have protested this attempt to privatize prisons in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, California and elsewhere. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has been a leader in opposing Robinson and CCI's efforts nationwide. Our efforts have been successful and none of the state's approached have chosen to allow a Christian prison to be authorized.
The eradication of the gulf between Church and State has been assisted by the likes of the individuals and the organizations mentioned above. Their efforts have led to huge changes in many American concepts and governmental duties over the past decade and a half. The most obvious being the creation of the WHOFBCI offices by Bush and continued by President Obama. In addition this erosion has led to the emergence of the questioning of political candidate's religious practices and beliefs in each of the past several election cycles. More and more those on the far right are questioning the religious beliefs of those running for public office, then arguing that if those voiced beliefs aren't agreeable to those posing the questions, the candidate is somehow unfit for office. My feelings on this mirror those of many other Americans - that one's religious beliefs, practice of faith or worship has no place within our political arguments and especially when picking among candidates for public office. More and more religion is finding its way into our decisions on the way forward in this country. Of course, religion is an important part of most individual's life but it is personal and should be kept that way. One's personal religious beliefs should not be subject to public discussion or derision.
In addition, the same faction prying into the personal lives of political candidates are urging us to be against anything "Islamic" or "Muslim" in the U.S. This began following 9/11 and has increased every year since. The fact that this anti-religious movement has been led by "Christian" groups, members and organization is somewhat difficult for me to understand. Religious persecution of any kind is prohibited under our laws. From time to time this has been tested by radical and sometimes political groups - and the law has prevailed.
However it appears as though these conservative Christian groups are attempting to drag us kicking and screaming back into the middle ages of history, where religious wars were fought between factions in an effort of eliminating one another's church thereby making "their" religion the preferred one upon a world stage.
In the name of Christianity all of these things have been going on and many of us just shake our heads in disbelief, as we would at the antics of an errant child. It's time for us to again shake our heads...and clear out the cob-webs that are allowing this kind of personal and religious persecutions to continue. This is America - a land that those suffering from religious persecutions fled to in getting away from that kind of accepted behavior. Somehow that kind of persecution has found a way to spread once again, and this time not to our shores, rather from within our borders. Unless we stand up to this kind of religious manipulations and participation in our government and elections, we will find ourselves back where our ancestors were over 200 years ago. I don't know about you, but I don't want to have to start over.
Lets stop this in it's track once and for all. A good place to start is to disallow any religion - Christian or non-Christian from building and operating a Prison facility where their particular "ministering" to a captive number of convicts would be allowed.